The Hitchhiker I Did Not Pick Up Was Standing At The Cemetery Gate In The Morning

I did not pick him up because it was midnight and I am a woman on my own and I have a mother who raised me properly.

He was standing at the junction by the old mill. Long coat. Canvas bag over the shoulder. He raised a hand — not a thumb, a hand, flat, like a man greeting a neighbour.

I drove past and I felt bad about it for about six miles, which is the correct amount of time to feel bad about doing the sensible thing.

The next morning I drove out to the cemetery, because it was my father's anniversary and because I take him a plant that he would have said was a waste of money.

He was standing at the cemetery gate. Same coat, same bag.

Twelve miles from the junction. On foot, at night, in the rain, that is not impossible — it is four or five hours — and I want to be fair to reality here.

I stopped. I do not know why. I stopped and I put the window down and I said, "Did you walk?"

And he said — and this is the first sentence, and he said it as if we were continuing a conversation — "You couldn't have stopped last night. It wasn't the night for it."

I have never been able to decide whether that was a kindness or a threat.

He asked if I was visiting anybody. I said my father. He said, "Row eleven?"

My father is in row eleven.

I said yes, and my voice did something I did not authorise.

He nodded, and he stepped back from the car, and he said, "He was a good hand with an engine."

My father was a mechanic for forty-one years.

I put the plant on the grave. When I came back to the car park, which took me maybe seven minutes, there was nobody there, and the gate was in view the whole time, and the wall is six feet of brick with glass on top, and I did not see him leave.

I go every year. I always stop at the junction by the mill. I have never seen him again.

I keep hoping. That is the honest end of it. I keep hoping.